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I am reviewing the journal_settings entity which consists of attributes journal_id, locale, setting_name, setting_value and setting_type which contain the preferences of the manager and the default options settings regarding the magazine. I would like a little more extensive explanation of this entity.

Your question covers the purpose of the journal_settings table pretty well -- it's used for journal setup options and some defaults that are installed upon journal creation. Is there something specific you'd like to know?

Right now I still have the analysis entities rt_contexts,rt_searches and rt_versions, I have developed a hypothesis about the functioning of these three entities , I believe :Entity rt_contexts: contains the context of the searchEntity rt_searches contains the search enginesEntity rt_versions: areas of the search I have doubts is whether these entities perform the function that I consider , and inwhichthe time these functions are activated, ie situation where this is done ?

These store the database of various search engines used in the Reading Tools, which optionally appear as a sidebar on the reader's view of a submission. They represent the various resources listed in rt/en_US.

Do you have a test copy of OJS to explore? If so, it'll make these entities pretty evident. Go to Journal Management > Journal Sections and explore creating and editing sections. If you have specific questions beyond that, post them here.

The "assoc_type" / "assoc_id" pattern is used in many parts of the system. This permits entries in the notifications table to refer to other entities; assoc_type tells what kind of entity (and will have a value corresponding to one of the ASSOC_TYPE_... constants defined in PHP) and the assoc_id will contain the primary key value for the related entity.

The level column of the notifications table corresponds to NOTIFICATION_LEVEL_TRIVIAL, NOTIFICATION_LEVEL_NORMAL, or NOTIFICATION_LEVEL_TASK (defined in lib/pkp/classes/notification/PKPNotification.inc.php).

The processes table is used to track background processes, which are sometimes run to manage long-running tasks that are hidden from the user who may have started them (e.g. processing large numbers of citations). The time_started column indicates what time the process started at.

The signoffs table tracks different users' approvals of files in various stages of the system. The "symbolic" column tells OJS what type of interaction the row refers to -- e.g. the Author's approval of the Proofreading process (SIGNOFF_PROOFREADING_AUTHOR).

The "pos" column tracks the position of the indexed word in a particular field, e.g. article title. This allows multi-word searches to be matched exactly.

The "type" maps to one of the ARTICLE_SEARCH_... constants defined in classes/search/ArticleSearch.inc.php; in turn, when relevant, assoc_id maps to an external table to identify the item that was indexed (e.g. in the case of ARTICLE_SEARCH_GALLEY_FILE).